largely in consciousness, because, thinking in this matter of consciousness alone, they ignore the practical nature of His testimony. Fanatics of unholy lives have claimed the witness of the "Spirit with their spirit" to their being the children of God, led willingly by their deceitful hearts into thinking of the double witness being given through one channel-that of their own feelings-instead of being two recognisably separate testimonies the conscious feeling of their own spirit, and the character of a child of God appearing in their conduct the "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. v. 22). A valuable illustration of the action of spiritual reciprocity-conduct affecting capability in kind-presents itself in the fact that belief in human goodness is necessary to belief in the revealed goodness of God. Liking to think of God's moral perfections-faith's having them ever before the mind-cannot be combined with a liking to think of certain fellow-men's moral blemishes. The love of the first great commandment is inseparable from that of the second, and like unto it; and that love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Its tendency is to large, and not to contracted, belief in its proper objects-" hoping all things" of them, "believing all things" of a brother's goodness (1 Cor. xiii. 7). Recorded deathbed appearances have amply shown that persons who had during all the more generous period of life watched against losing by their feelings, and in progress of disciplining their thoughts to serve worldliness well had acquired the power of thinking all generosity calculated, all good done for selfish ends, all mercy a bargain, have lost the power to think of free loving-kindness coming from God. It is likely that in their first selfish views of life they began, from a subjective sense of comfort in the thought, to contemplate Him as a just oftener than as a good being; and from that hardened into thinking of Him as a strict exacting master; if they did not, with the progress of their own character, form new and worse notions of Him as a vindictive ruler, at least an inexorable judge. But the end too plainly came to be, that when about to see Him face to face, they had no thought of His loving at all, and sought only how to propitiate His anger. The necessity of the true human character—that of charity—to the power of

thinking truly of God, appears similarly in the case of the most conspicuously selfish and bitter faiths sometimes indulged in by religious sectaries. Sectaries have often formed to themselves a theory dislocating faith altogether from conduct, professing to think the soul's beholding of God a thing highly exalted above being affected by the circumstances of their human intercourse; but unable to avoid always the feeling of the spiritual connection established in human nature as well as declared in God's word, requiring "him that loveth God to love his brother also," they have begun their defence of their own narrowness of conduct by the old question, "Who is my brother?" and then confining that title to their own associates in creed or in closer communion, they have ended in accommodating their thoughts of the moral nature of God to the dispositions they were conscious of themselves. Their measure of who are included in the second great commandment has formed their faith as to Him who appears in its inseparable companion the first; and they have narrowed His view of His human family to their own. The Pharisees, who failed to recognise in Jesus Christ the express image of God, had a fitting preparation for such failure of spiritual perception in their practice of the "corban," which so depreciated the human family relationship in their service of the heavenly Father.

10. The Apostle John places this part of the spiritual reci- The imposprocity in an impressive light in his pregnant question-" He faith. that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" (1 John iv. 20). Whatever religious conduct towards ordinary unimportant fellow-men is meant here-including appreciation-that is made a condition of ability to have the same conduct towards God. And the connection between the practice of it towards man and the practice of it towards God is stated in terms which are used but a few times in the Scriptures, to give superlative consequence to the matter referred to-the language of simple possibility or impossibility. The manner of expression is the same as in the few instances: "Without faith it is impossible to please God;" "How can ye believe who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only ?"

Naturally existing judicial element;

"The carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be ;" and seems to bid us think of an impossibility not arbitrarily imposed by God, but a natural consequence, like those humanly impossible things, which need God's special interposition to make them possible.

11. The expression with which Paul completes his history of Gentile unbelief, "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness" (Rom. i. 24), formally enunciates a judicial element in the reciprocal influence of faith and faithfulness which brings into our view again the great fact of man's union with God-underlying this as all the manifestations of true religious life. In the practice of faith itself, the power to possess and be possessed by its thoughts, as well as in the exertions and enjoyments of faith's outgoings, man is always a fellow-worker with God; and, accordingly, the consequences to be expected from the working of human nature have to be expected also as inseparable from a widely-declared provision of God's government of grace: "To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even what he thinketh he hath ;” “The meek will He guide in judgment; the meek will He teach His way;" "To the upright there ariseth light in the darkness; the integrity of the upright shall guide them, but the perverseness of the wicked shall destroy them." The reciprocity of faith and faithfulness-righteous life and spiritual discernment, doing the will of God and knowing the doctrine whether it be of God, the eye single and the whole body full of light, the eye evil and the body full of darkness-is discovered to us to be a working of that unavoidable indissoluble relationship of man to God, the effects of which upon man's spiritual condition sensitively follow the fluctuations of his desire after, or his departure from, the living God. The formally-declared government by moral judgment, which extends over all the religious history of man, from Eden downwards, is not any arbitrary thing or positive condition laid by God upon human life which He might not have laid upon it. It is natural, as a father's government of his child by positive laws is unavoidably a natural government, and different in his and the child's ex

perience from his government of the same form exercised over his horse or his dog, or over a distant and unknown human instrument of his will. Hence man may perceive but a natural effect following his faithfulness or faithlessness, an effect which speaks to his ear, not from the mouth of God, but of his own consciousness, though it is certainly all judicial also. So did the effect of sin upon the power of believing in God come, a fruit and a judgment in one, upon them who first bowed down under spiritual death. It has been the lot of all born in their image; the nearest, habitually, to God no more exempt from it than those afar off, death passing upon all men, because all have sinned. David before and David after his great souldefiling sin seems like two different men in the power of believing in Jehovah's love. From habitual peace of trust he passed to most frequent despondency, and, as it were, suspiciousness of His providence. David's failure to keep the comfort of faith has to an observer the form of natural consequence. The loss and recovery by the people of Israel, throughout their history, of influential perception of heavenly truth, as their faithfulness to Jehovah diminished or increased, shows itself to us in the form of judgment. The source of the change was the same in both-the unavoidable dependence of the human spirit for spiritual life upon God its Father.

vading

12. The judicial connection between practice and percep- one pertion in matters of revealed truth is no peculiarity of what we all God's technically call the religious part of man's life-no govern-gove of ment imposed thereon by God in addition to or apart from man. the usually seen natural order of human things. All connection of obedient effort with success in any facility pointed out to us by God's providence, is to be considered a judicial connection established by Him for our moral training; only our constant propensity is to separate some things which we have chosen technically to call religious from the rest of our life's ways, and think of them as a separate kingdom of God's government-an error which it is the business of the religious exercise of reason to correct. The connection between faith and works, knowing and doing, in matters of revealed truth, is a law of the same authority with that by which, in learning

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any art or kind of work requiring mental or manual skill, the practical man, who puts his hand to the work, and is daily grappling with the difficulties of its various tasks obediently to his vocation, has always the clearest, most consistent, and handiest knowledge of the principles that should guide him, and has a persuasion of their truth of a kind which is not enjoyed by one who is merely book-learned in those principles. And abundant religious knowledge gives confidence and breadth to religious practice, just as knowledge of the principles of his art gives its possessor a freedom and resource not in the power of one who has merely learned empirically. Reciprocity rules in both the secular and religious combinations of thought and action, and it is by a judicial arrangement of man's natureby a governing provision made in his constitution.

A normal state of capabilities.

Intellectual Conditions to Faith.

13. A normal completeness or healthiness of human nature -mens sana in corpore sano-is unavoidably a condition to a normal completeness of faith. No one would take a hypochondriac's thoughts of the trustworthiness of human affection as a sound faith or disbelief. There are social Ishmaelites who fancy every man's hand against them. There are mental cases analogous to the want of a musical ear; persons greatly lacking in imagination; others so cold as to be held as unnatural. Persons defective in these ways are no fit judges of emotional things of a profound or delicate kind, and are sure to form an under-estimate of them-perhaps an estimate so defective as to be practical disbelief of them, ignoring them in reasoning upon a subject in which they are of essential moment. Again, acuteness of intellect has sometimes been so without any regulating judgment, as to go upon a clear logical line into the most ridiculous blunders. The undefinable quality of common sense is indispensable to attaining correctly - reasoned conclusions in matters of faith. This mental quality, which seems unconsciously, or without notice, to bring to bear on every point considered many guiding, cor